updated 07:58 am EST, Wed December 4, 2013

Issued licenses allow for 4G LTE cellular usage in China

The three major carriers in China have been issued licenses to operate TD-LTE networks in the country. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has provided the licenses to China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom today, which opens the door to Chinese mobile users being able to use faster mobile connections in the future.

While the TD-LTE licenses is a good start and extremely useful for China Mobile, The Next Webreports that China Telecom and China Unicom may be receiving FDD-LTE licenses in the near future, and thanks to TD-LTE's China-specific nature, allows for a wider array of 4G-capable devices to operate on their networks.

China Mobile is believed to be the most advanced of the three in terms of 4G roll-out, with the company building the network since early 2012. It has also been revealed that a subsidiary of China Mobile started to accept pre-orders for the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c yesterday, an early sign that the carrier and Apple had completed an agreement that has taken six years to finalize. China Mobile is thought to have somewhere in the region of 740 million subscribers, and has not sold iPhones to customers previously, something which will give Apple a considerable user boost for its smartphone.